


Reunion

by ignitesthestars



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Real World, F/M, Fluff, Long-Distance Relationship, Post-Break Up, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-30
Updated: 2015-05-30
Packaged: 2018-04-01 22:13:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4036441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignitesthestars/pseuds/ignitesthestars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eight years ago, Annabeth and Percy broke up. A ten year high school reunion isn't exactly the most romantic stage for coming back together, but the two of them never did do anything the typical way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Annabeth has no idea why she’s here.

No - that’s a lie. Piper made what had seemed like a perfectly sensible argument at the time and convinced her to come ‘show off’ at the this place.

“Come on!” she’d said. “You’re successful, you look amazing. You’re literally the person people dream of being when it comes to a reunion.”

It had appealed to Annabeth’s ego, just like Piper had known it was. Standing in the hall now, abandoned by her best friend and clutching a punch cup like it’s a lifeline, Annabeth decides that her ego needs to go on a holiday somewhere. Like hell, maybe.

Of course, that’s when she spots Percy Jackson, and realises that she’s already there.

She recognises him instantly. None of this slow downing  _he’s hot, but where do I know him from?_  bullshit. The second she sees that messy head of hair bobbing through the crowds of sadly dancing adults, she knows that the sea-green eyes will follow, the mouth that—

_Oh, god, hide, he’s looking this way._

But Annabeth has never been one to hide from anything, much less an ex-boyfriend. Even an ex-boyfriend who never, technically, did anything wrong. Time and distance and money had broken them apart, not any lack of feeling on their parts.

_Seriously, hide. You know what’s going to happen if you start talking again. You’ll be swapping cell numbers and catching up on Facebook, which you swore you’d never do, and—_

“Percy!” She waves, ignoring the half dozen heads that turn at the sound of her voice, and then don’t turn away when they realised who she is and who she’s calling to. Ten years out of highschool, and people are still incurable gossips.

Those impossibly beautiful eyes zero in on her immediately, and before she can kick start her brain into gear, a wide grin is breaking across his face. “Annabeth!”

He breaks into a jog, nearly knocks someone into the buffet on the way. He barely stops to apologise, and by the time he skids to a halt in front of her, she’s hiding a laugh - badly - behind her hand.

“Some things never change,” and it’s so easy to just slip back into teasing him, as though they’re teenagers again and this is just another school dance. He looks about the same way he did back then, a nice jacket buttoned wrong over a t-shirt, dark jeans, Chucks. They’re blue, and she’s not even a little bit surprised.

“I dunno.” He glances back over his shoulder. “No one broke anything, right?’

She laughs again, and he’s still grinning and that’s - it. Her laughter fades into its own smile, and his softens a little, and maybe anyone else would call the silence between them awkward.

But it’s not. It’s perfect, the two of them standing maybe a foot apart, almost-but-not-quite touching as they drink in the sight of each other.

"I…” Annabeth starts, and doesn’t bother finishing the sentence. What could she possibly say, to cover so many years?

“Yeah,” Percy agrees simply. His hand, calloused and brown, reaches out tentatively to take hers. Annabeth winds their fingers together instantly, and without a further word, they both head for the exit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually a series of oneshots i wrote on my tumblr that i've decided to throw up here, so if there's some wonkiness between tense and that sort of thing, that's why. I hope you enjoy it!


	2. Chapter 2

A part of Annabeth thinks that this is ridiculous. They aren’t in a movie, for god’s sake, and the man she’s holding hands with right now is not the boy she loved back in high school. And college. And after college, and maybe the truth is that Annabeth’s work isn’t the only thing stopping her from investing in a long term relationship.

Percy’s fingers twitch around hers as they head around the back of buildings, where they both know there’s a service ladder. It’s ingrained, even after all of these years, and Annabeth doesn’t hesitate to reach for the bottom rung, hauling herself up with relative ease. It requires letting go of Percy’s hand, and there’s no denying she feels a pang at the sudden loss of contact.

A low chuckle eases that almost immediately, ignites something else in the pit of her stomach that she really shouldn’t be thinking about when climbing a rickety old ladder.

“Good to see you kept in shape.”

He’s grinning when she twists around to stare at him, and from anyone else she would have called that a line. But his warm gaze is looking her directly in the face, even though her cocktail dress is totally not made for these kinds of shenanigans, and he really is just talking about her physical ability.

“Did you expect anything different?” She clambers up the last few rungs and drops herself onto the edge of the roof, letting her legs dangle over the sides. It’s probably going to fuck up her dress, but it’s not like she’s planning on heading back into the hall where the reunion is in full swing.

“Honestly?” He hauls himself up the ladder like his own body weight is nothing. “I was kind of trying not to expect anything. I didn’t even know if you’d come.”

He hits the roof, and there’s a second of hesitation that brings their years of separation into sharp relief, before he lets his body drop onto the lip of the building next to her. His body doesn’t brush up against her for even a second, but she can feel the heat of him anyway. It’s not clear which of them reaches for the other’s hand again first.

“I didn’t want to,” she admits. She thinks about qualifying that. Not because of you. High school sucked. I just didn’t want to come back here. I’ve come so far, Percy. But she leaves it there, and he doesn’t seem to talk offence.

He would have, once. They were both so touchy around each other as kids. Not after a couple of years together as a couple, but in the early days? It was all excuse me!? and what did you just say!?A lot of question and exclamation marks to cover up just how much the other’s opinion meant to them. It was easier to get outraged than to admit how much they cared, easier than getting close, easier than getting hurt again.

Does it mean anything, that neither of them seems scared of that now?

“Yeah, I don’t blame you. Highschool sucked. And you, uh – you seem to be doing pretty well.”

He doesn’t let go of her hand, but the other one comes up to rub the back of his neck. He tips his face up to the stars, and in the moonlit glow she can’t actually see that he’s turning red, but she knows he is anyway.

“Facebook, huh?”

“It was public,” he protested mildly.

“Yes, well. So was yours, Captain.” She never would have admitted the stalking first, but if he’s going to do it, she doesn’t mind letting him know that she’s kept tabs on him every now and then.

But never reaching out. They both have that thought at the same time, she thinks, because the silence that descends on them is a thick, heavy thing after that. She doesn’t start thinking of how to leave, but she does start struggling for something – anything – to say. The quiet is no longer comfortable.

“Hey, look.” His free hand is gone from his neck, tracing blurry lines on the sky instead. “It’s Bob.”

Annabeth chokes on a laugh. Bob the betta had been a fish that Percy had acquired on a whim as teenager and gotten completely chewed out by a scrappy fourteen year old about proper tank size and care. Bob lasted another four years after Percy reformed his ways. Annabeth had been at school when he died, unable to make it back for the completely appropriate Viking funeral . She’d printed out a star map instead, creating a new constellation for the fish.

That had been near the end of their relationship, the distance just too vast for them to cross. She can still remember Skyping with him in the evening, watching him try to do the exact same thing he’s doing now. Between the low resolution webcam and Percy’s inability to aim it in the right direction, it hadn’t really worked.

It works now. After a beat or two, Annabeth lifts their conjoint hands instead, drawing a smooth curve from point to point. “I wanted to extend the tail,” she tells him. “But I couldn’t find the right star.”

“You made a whole constellation. I’m pretty sure Bob will forgive you if his tail is a little short.”

There’s no secret meaning in the words. Percy is not saying that he forgives her for being out of contact for so long, or asking forgiveness for himself. Maybe that’s why she kisses him. Ten years out of highschool, eight separated, and he might have grown up in all kinds of ways she can see and doesn’t know about yet, but he’s still Percy Jackson.

And Annabeth never really stopped loving Percy Jackson.

The sound he makes is not one of surprise. It’s need, sudden and all consuming, and the edge of a building is probably not the place to be doing this right now, but she doesn’t care. I won’t fall if he doesn’t she thinks dizzily, as one of those big, calloused hands comes up to cup her cheek. Hers curl in the fabric of his jacket, and she laughs into his mouth, remembering that he’d done the buttons up wrong.

That gets her thinking about fixing those buttons, or maybe just undoing them and getting rid of the jacket entirely and that – that is definitely not the kind of thinking to be doing on the edge of a building. His grin quirks up against her, and he kisses the corner of her mouth instead.

“Do I want to know?”

There are a million things she could say, but she just kisses him again. “You’re an idiot.”

“Oh. Well, I knew that.”


	3. Chapter 3

There’s a curiously hole in Annabeth’s memory, one that would have made her uncomfortable if she had been with anyone except Percy.

She doesn’t remember how they got back to his apartment.

Car? Taxi? Did he end up getting a motorcycle like he said he wanted to? She has no idea. She doesn’t even look around the place once they get there, no judging the architecture or the style or the construction. She’s too busy getting rid of that stupid jacket, finally, with his hands hot like brands on her hips, searing even through the material of her dress.

He kicks the door shut. She has a second to think  _where is a couch, or some other horizontal surface_  before he’s pushing her up against it, and his mouth is no long on hers but biting kisses along her jaw instead, her neck. She’s tangling her fingers in his hair when he ruins it, making a face into the crook of her bare shoulder.

“Did you just say  _blech_?” she demands.

There’s a choked sound from him. She considers briefly that it’s panic, before the humour in it translates.

“Your perfume smells great,” he informs her throat, lips whispering over her skin as he does it. Annabeth is in no way convinced that it’s accidental. “But I gotta say, it doesn’t taste amazing.”

She snorts, which is unsexy, and comfortable, and somehow sexy anyway because of that. “ _I’m_  sorry, I wasn’t planning on hooking up with my ex-boyfriend when I left the hotel this evening.”

It’s the kind of thought that should stop them both, but Percy only laughs, properly this time. And then his teeth scrape over her clavicle and his tongue sooths it right after and she’s dragging his head up to her mouth again to kiss her properly.

He tastes like artificial raspberry, and she knows instinctively that one of the organisers remembered, that there was a blue drink at the buffet just for Percy Jackson, because that’s the kind of shit this man inspires in people sometimes. It’s so damn familiar, her finger curls inward, tugging at his hair a little harder, scratching lightly over his scalp.

Percy hisses into her mouth, presses her harder into the door. It feels good, the length of him flush against her; his hand feels better as it curves around her side, dragging inch by inch down her torso, over her waist, her hips, lower, until it’s flirting with the hem of her dress, fluttering over her outer thigh. She hooks her leg over his hip instinctively, and the hem rides up, taking his hand with it.

“I love this dress,” he pants, resting his forehead against hers for a second. She cups his face in both her hands, slides them down his body until they’re clenching in his shirt.

“If you say it’d look better on the floor, I’m going to hit you.”

And he looks  _startled_  at that, because of course he does. This is Percy Jackson, and he has magically spirited her away to his apartment, pushed her up against a door and started making out with her – in earnest – all the will having no intentions of taking it further.

A gentle roll of her hips and the way his hands tighten on her says he wouldn’t be adverse, but. It had never been a plan for him, and Annabeth thinks that they could have curled up on the couch with a mug of tea and he would have been happy.

She has to squeeze her eyes shut for a second. Just a second, blocking out the sight of him and his stupid face that she hasn’t seen in too many years now.

“Annabeth?”

“I’m fine.” She cracks an eye open, smiles at him, reassuring. It softens out the sudden frown lines marring said stupid face, and she opens the other eye. “I just – missed you.”

Something shifts in his gaze then, darkens. She’s nowhere near naked, but the way he looks at her makes her feel like she’s about to be, and  _oh_ , she absolutely does not care.

No, that’s a lie. She does care. She cares in the sense that she’s not naked right this moment with this idiot man, and that is too many moments to have clothes between them. His mouth falls upon hers again as his hand pushes higher up her thigh and she pulls urgently at his shirt, getting it halfway up his torso before one of them has to let go in order to get the job done.

And Annabeth loves his hands on her bare skin, she really does, but he has her at an extremely unfair disadvantage here. So she wins, staring at him flushed and panting until he takes his hand off her ass and lets her strip the shirt away.

“Jesus, Percy,” she mutters, trying not to stare. Her hands don’t have the same problem, starting at hers shoulders and tiptoeing their way down, down, over his collarbones, his pectorals, his abdomen, thumbs circling over his hipbones. He curses, and he’s hard, she can  _see_  that he’s hard, but she’s going to have to deal with that later, because his chest is a lot. “Do you live at the gym?”

“My job involves a lot of lifting,” he informs her, and she can hear the strain in his voice. “Annabeth—”

She smirks at him. “Sorry, it’s been a while. Is that a  _touch me_ , Annabeth? Or an  _I want to touch you,_  Annabeth?”

“ _Both_.”

His hands are on her again, shoving the skirt of her dress up higher until it’s bunched around her waist and she sucks in a sharp breath as his knee works between her thighs and he pulls her leg tighter around him. The pleasure is delicious, and there’s no stopping the way her hips stutter down against him without her say so. Not that she’d say anything different, right now.

She tries to return the favour, fumbling with his belt, but he does it again. And again, again, sending rolling waves of need crashing through her body until she just grips at his waist instead, kissing his chest, his shoulder, his throat.

His mouth finds her ear. “I’m going to get you off like this,” he murmurs, and it’s the most sensual thing she’s ever fucking heard. “Fully clothed, clinging to me. And then I’m going to take you into my bedroom and eat you out until you can’t remember your own fucking name…”

She whimpers. She can’t help herself, and the sound from her draws a harsh pant from him. She rubs against him like a fucking teenager and doesn’t care, spellbound by the low sound of his voice in her ear detailing exactly how he’s going to fuck her, and  _that_  is confidence, that’s the change that’s happened in the both of them in the years since their separation, except there’s no time to analyse personality shifts right now because it feels  _so fucking good_ —

Annabeth shatters. The heat, the friction, his stupid voice, it build and builds until she can’t contain it anymore. He’s right, and she doesn’t mind proving it to him, her hands somehow having ended up draped over his shoulders, nails digging into sun bronzed skin. Clinging. The memory of a low cry lingers, and she realises after a second or two of nothing but harsh breathing and aftershocks that it had been her.

She doesn’t care. There are worst sex sounds to make, and this man has probably heard all of them from her. It takes her another couple of seconds to realise that she’d bitten him, and she winces, pressing soft kisses to the teeth marks until the kisses become less soft and Percy shudders, all the way down his stupid, perfect body.

“I have an amendment,” she informs him, working her mouth slowly up the sweat slicked skin of his neck until _she_  can reach his ear. “To your plan. From before.”

“O-oh?”

The confidence is hot –  _unbelievably hot_. But the flush to his cheeks, the way he stutters as he remembers exactly what filthy things had spilled from his lips in the heat of the moment, Annabeth likes that as well. It definitely helps steady her hands as she deals with his belt, and the button, and the zip.

She palms his cock in her hand, smirking against his cheek at the way he groans. And then she tells him, in detail, just what she plans on doing with his cock and her mouth, and there isn’t a whole lot of talking from that point onwards.

* * *

Annabeth wakes up to a tongue in her face and not in any nice kind of way. She doesn’t  _mean_  to shriek, but it happens anyway as she bolts into a sitting position, shoving away a giant, furry black head in the process.

“ _Mrs O’Leary?_ ”

She’s going to cry. Which is ridiculous, it’s just a dog, but – but it’s definitely Mrs O’Leary, looking a little grey around the edges but still the giant, boisterous animal she had been eight years ago.

“Woof!” Mrs O’Leary announces, and recommences trying to drown Annabeth in saliva. Annabeth probably has the upper arm strength to stop her, but really – she’s half asleep, and it’s  _Mrs O’Leary._  Annabeth stops the dog from crushing her, but that’s about it.

A confused mumble comes from the other side of the bed. It’s supposed to be a word, she’s pretty sure, but god knows  _what_  word. The sheets thrash around for a few seconds, and then Percy Jackson’s head is popping out of them, blinking blearily.

Annabeth holds her breath, and even the dog stops trying to eat her. The second those sea-green eyes fall on her, though, his expression clears, and he grins. Wide, open, completely content.

She watches the uncertainty filter in, the edges of panic. She can practically read his thoughts on his face.  _She’s still here! Does she want to still be here? Does she just need a ride or something? Maybe she slept in? Nah, Annabeth never sleeps in. But maybe she does now_?

Slowly, Annabeth untangles one hand from fending off Mrs O’Leary and brushes it against the backs of his fingers. They twitch, and a beat or two passes before Percy grins again, tangling her hand with his instead.

“So, uh.” He looks at their hands, his dog, her face. “I guess we have kind of a lot to catch up on, huh?”

The hope in his voice pierces right through her, prying into her very self. It hurts, and once Annabeth would have shied away from that pain, the lingering threat that this is all a mistake and is only going to end in heartache again.

But she is not once-Annabeth anymore. So she squeezes his hand and shifts over as best she can, with the dog turning her legs numb. Her lips brush the corner of his smile, taking a little bit of it for herself.

“I guess we do,” she says. “But you’re making me breakfast, first.”


	4. Chapter 4

Percy’s a Fire Captain. Which, yes, Annabeth knew from Facebook, but it’s one thing to read an impersonal line on a profile, and another to watch his face light up when he tells her about it, the way he rubs the back of his neck and ducks his head when he admits that it’s a recent promotion, that it’s only a small station, that he’s kind of nervous about the responsibility anyway.

“You’ll do great,” she reassures him. They’re sitting at his kitchen table, Mrs O'Leary panting at her feet. She’s wearing one of his shirts and a pair of boxers while her dress goes through the wash, and the remnants of blue pancakes linger on the plate in front of her. What happens

“You think?” he asks after a moment, like her opinion matters to him still. And the thing is, she can tell that it does, and it pricks her with guilt. Does she have any right to be important to this man still, after so long apart? It’s not like she knows any more about his life than what social network stalking has been able to tell her over the years.

“I think…” Annabeth looks down at her hands, struggling with a way to continue that reassurance in a meaningful way when nearly an entire decade of his life is a mystery to her now. “I think that you’ve always been the kind of person that people look up to, that people want to follow. And I know it’s been a long time, but I don’t think you’re the kind of person who would have lost that with adulthood. So long as you keep your temper in check, you should be fine.”

He blinks at her. “What temper?”

The frisson of panic lances through her before she sees the lazy way the corner of his mouth is quirking up. She smacks him in the shoulder, smirking back at him as he cries out.

“Hey, ouch! What kind of architect needs to hit that hard, huh?”

“The kind who does kickboxing to stay fit. What kind of firefighter can’t take a punch?”

“Uh, I don’t know what fires are like in your city, but they usually aren’t punching me.”

No, but panicked people did. Whole buildings fell on top of people sometimes. She’d had those vague worries back when they were dating, when Percy was just a kid with a dream who hadn’t quite managed to get his act together to follow it. 

What would it be like, dating a firefighter? Hastily, Annabeth shoved the question back into the depths of her mind. They’d had ‘I haven’t seen you in years’ sex. And it had been amazing. Better, honestly, than any of the 'I love you more than anything’ sex they’d had as kids, because while that had had the intimacy, they definitely weren’t kids any more.

And…if Annabeth is going for honest right now, the intimacy hadn’t been missing either. But that thought gets shoved back next to the dating question, because she still lives in a completely different city to Percy Jackson, has a completely different life.

“Annabeth?”

“Hmm? Oh - sorry.” She smiles, sheepishly. “I drifted off for a couple of seconds there.”

“S'ok.” Somewhere in the background, her dress beeps. “I’ll put that in the dryer for you. But, uh, when it’s done - would you wanna go out somewhere? For a walk, or lunch, or something. You don’t have to, obviously, but I’d like to. Keep talking, you know. Catching up.”

Annabeth swallows, glancing down. “Well. It looks like Mrs O'Leary could use a walk.” Mrs O'Leary huffed her agreement at the word 'walk’. “And our flight doesn’t leave till tonight. Just let me call Piper.”

It’s Jason, blessedly, who answers the phone - Piper’s in the shower, which means Annabeth doesn’t have to hear her smugness ooze through the phone. Annabeth wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that this whole situation was somehow one big set up from her friend, but even Piper doesn’t have that kind of power. 

At least, she didn’t think so.

It means she gets through the conversation with a quick explanation, hanging up just as she hears Piper’s voice calling in the background. She turns her phone onto silent so she has a feasible excuse to ignore it, and then turns a smile on Percy. “We’re good to go.”

There’s a vague worry in the back of her head that they’re going to run out of things to talk about, that it’ll become awkward, but it never does. She’s bumped into people on the street that were less important to her than Percy Jackson, and not had such easy conversation. Maybe it’s the passage of time helping things along, or maybe…maybe it’s just that when they broke up, they were both heartbroken over it. That it hadn’t been any personal failings that caused it, but things that were totally out of their hands.

There’s no lingering blame, and plenty of lingering feeling. They tell each other about work, family, friends, hobbies. They walk  _and_ have lunch, and when they’re done Annabeth cautiously asks Percy if he wouldn’t mind her going back to his apartment instead of dropping her off at the hotel.

His smile is like the sun coming up. She grins back at him, and they hold hands all the way back to the car.

“What time did you say your flight was?” he asks later, peering distractedly into his pantry. He hasn’t brought it up yet, but she knows he’s thinking dinner.

“I didn’t,” she admits, checking her watch. “I’d probably have to go soon, if I wanted to catch it.”

It’s only after the words are out of her mouth that she registers the  _probably,_ the  _if._ That she admits to herself that she doesn’t really want to get on that plane just yet.

Percy is still for once, just staring into the cupboard. And then he shuts it, slowly, turning wide, sea-green eyes on her.

“Please stay,” he blurts, and something unlocks in her chest, feels lighter. “One more night. I’ll take the couch or something, if you don’t want - I’d just like it a lot. If you would stay for a bit longer.”

She doesn’t even bother pretending to think about it, thumbing through her contacts to find Piper. She smirks at him as she lifts the phone to her ear. 

“Why would you need to take the couch?”


	5. Chapter 5

Annabeth stays for a week.

She tells her boss it’s a personal emergency, and it’s sort of the truth. It’s definitely personal and the emergency, Piper claims, is her love life (she does not tell this to her boss). It’s not like she doesn’t have an obscene amount of leave saved up anyway - even if it’s on short notice, maybe HR will stop riding her ass about not taking breaks now.

Percy, quite literally in charge of saving lives (or at least property) doesn’t have the same luxury. But he has zero issues with handing over his spare key and leaving her in charge of his dog for the twenty four hours he has to go to the station. She spends the day walking Mrs O'Leary, relearning the small city she left a decade ago.

It leaves her with an uneasy feeling in her gut. Unsettled. There’s no  _Sweet Home Alabama_  moment where she remembers how to love the place that formed her. Annabeth’s childhood hadn’t been traumatic, exactly, but children who love the place they’re growing up in don’t run away at seven years old. They don’t escape to summer camp every chance they get, and they don’t turn around and never come back once they leave for college.

“Hey.” It’s midday, and Percy has been puttering around in the kitchen for about a half hour, looking a little like a zombie and unable to decide what he wants to eat. “What’s up?”

Annabeth, sitting on the floor and playing with Mrs O'Leary, fights the urge to bristle. _Nothing_ , she wants to snap.  _I’m fine_. But she’s not fine, and the fact that he can tell that even though she’d been baby-talking his nine year old dog only makes her feel more uneasy.

For a moment or two, she says nothing, winding her fingers in the dog’s thick fur. Liquid black eyes gaze up at her, trusting, before delivering one long lick up the side of her face. Percy chuckles, but the sound is just as subdued as Annabeth’s  _blech_ , as he waits nervously for her to respond.

“This has been great,” she says finally, turning her head to look at him. “I mean, you know how I feel about this, I don’t think I’ve word-vomited so many of my thoughts - well, ever.”

“I’m sensing a massive but hanging off the end of that sentence.”

They both crack a grin at that -  _massive but -_ but the smiles fade soon enough as Annabeth struggles to articulate exactly what her problem is.

“I don’t want to live here any more than I did eight years ago,” she sighs finally, feeling her cheeks heat up. “Not that - not that I’m thinking after a week of great sex and reconnecting that we’re at the moving cities to be with each other stage, but I think - I  _know_  we’re both definitely at the point where we’re wondering where this can go from here.”

Percy’s face takes on a serious cast, and for the first time that week Annabeth wishes he was wearing a shirt. It’s hard to focus on the moment when she can see the shift and slide of all those muscles every time he moves.

“And you’re saying it can’t go here?”

She wants to look away, but she knows she owes him eye contact. So she holds his gaze and nods, trying not to feel too miserable. He doesn’t need that.

Percy nods back. “Okay.”

Annabeth rocks back, feeling abruptly like a deflated balloon. “ _Okay?_ ”

“Uh–” Just as abruptly, Percy seems to realise how that could be construed. Sea green eyes widen almost comically, and he swallows, hard. “No, no, I don’t mean - not ‘okay, that’s it, thanks for the great sex’ or anything. I’ve always known you hate this place, Annabeth. I’d never want to be the guy to drag you back.”

Just like she hadn’t wanted to be the girl to drag him away. But that just puts them right back in the place they were eight years ago, and Annabeth has to tell herself those aren’t tears - of frustration, of something worse - pricking at her eyes as she buries her face in Mrs O'Leary’s stomach. The dog whines a little. 

Annabeth knows how she feels.

“But. I’m not the same guy I was eight years ago, you know? At least, I sure as hell hope I’m not. Which isn’t to say that I’m Mr Creepy-Hey-We-Reconnected-For-A-Week-I’m-Going-To-Uproot-My-Life-For-You, but I don’t think I have to be? We both have pretty steady incomes, my time off lines up with actual weekends every few weeks. We could…give it a shot? For a little while? And see what happens from there?”

The hopeful lilt that comes with every verbal question mark is enough to pull the smile back onto Annabeth’s face, if a little tremulously. “I think the word you’re looking for is 'date’,” she says, lifting her head away from his dog. 

That wins a laugh, and she watches the set of his shoulders relax. “Right. Is that something you think you can handle, Wonder Woman?”

He says it lightly, but it’s a loaded question all the same. She -  _they -_ hadn’t been able to handle it, the last time around.

But they’d been kids then. Kids trying to handle their own personal shit, trying to figure out how to start their lives outside the safety net of highschool and with no idea how to go about balancing - well, anything. If Annabeth is honest with herself, she thinks that she’s probably still not great at balancing things.

She’s willing to try, though. She’s  _capable_  of trying, and seeing the way Percy looks at her - not just with a sort of adoration that ties her stomach in the best kind of knots, but with a careful understanding, a kind sort of intelligence that they’d both been too young and dumb to cultivate eight years ago - she wants to try. She really, really wants to try.

So she pushes herself to her feet. If there’s a little bit of saunter to her step as she walks over to him, a rueful smirk to her lips as she drapes her arm over her bare shoulders, well - she’s feeling good. She’s allowed to feel good, right?

“I can handle that,” she says, injecting as much confidence as she can into the words, ignoring the giant  _what happens after that_  question hovering over her head that could crush them both. “What about you?”

“Oh, I can handle anything you throw at me,” he declares, dipping his head to give her a slow, swearing kiss. His arms wrap around her waist, belying the easiness of the declaration.

He is not, it seems, going to let her go any time soon.


	6. Chapter 6

“So. What are you wearing?”

Annabeth snorted, reaching forward to angle the laptop camera at her torso. It was ten o’clock at night in the middle of winter. She was wearing snuggly flannel pyjamas. With penguins on them.

For some reason, the penguins had sunglasses.

Percy’s face grinned back at her on the screen. “Oh yeah, that’s the stuff.”

“I can see you dressed up for this, too.”

His pyjamas had giraffes on them. His hair was also adorably rumpled, and Annabeth could feel her fingers twitch with the urge to run through them. Difficult, when he was hours and hours away.

“Hey, I just woke up. I have an excuse.”

Napping, Annabeth was learning, was an effective way of off-setting the sleep deprivation that most firefighters struggled with. She wasn’t convinced it require giraffe jammies, though.

“Yeah, well my excuse is that they’re comfortable, and it doesn’t matter if I get tomato sauce on them. Are we going to do this, or did you want to crack some more phone sex jokes?”

There were a lot of men Annabeth had known who, she felt, would have taken that opportunity to crack another sex joke. Or dropped the joking part entirely. Percy Jackson, however, coughed a little, running a hand through his dark hair and rumpling it even further. 

Annabeth’s fingers twitched again, but she smirked. He could whisper filthy things into her ear in person, in the heat of the moment, but neither one of them had  _quite_  gotten their heads around sex, and Skype, and mixing the two of them.

She was becoming a pretty good cook, though. If she did say so herself.

“Did you get the meat? Don’t look at me like that, it’s your fault you flustered me.”

“You’re a crappy flirt, Jackson. How did you get a girlfriend?”

“I dunno, you’d have to ask her. She’s a genius, though, she knows what she’s doing.”

 _That_  earned him a pleased smile, because Annabeth wasn’t going to pretend to be immune to flattery. “Oh, she definitely does. Except when it comes to making spaghetti, come on, let’s get started.”

It had been a month and a half since the highschool reunion in their hometown, five weeks since they had decided to make a go of the long distance thing. His shift cycle had coincided with a weekend once during that time, but she hadn’t been able to wrangle the time away, stuck in the middle of a project. 

The fierceness with which she missed him took her breath away sometimes, an almost physical ache that accosted her most strongly at moments like this, when she had dragged herself home from the office and through traffic and he was still recovering from saving lives (or at least kittens) the day before. The fact that there was someone in the world who she even wanted to  _talk_  to once she’d washed her make up off and crawled into her pyjamas, much less take a cooking lesson from, was just as shocking.

Maybe it was just the honeymoon phase. Could you have a honeymoon phase when you’d already spent a decade growing up with someone, nearly half of that dating? Did eight years apart mean hitting the reset button, or did it mean skipping over the awkward getting-to-know-you-surprise-I-am-a-human-being-who-farts-sometimes bit?

“It’s gonna burn.”

Annabeth swore, whisking the saucepan up off the stove. It was a better reaction than the first few times they’d tried this - she’d turned the temperature down, which, as it turned out, did not have an immediate effect on the saucepan itself. There was a clapping sound from her laptop, and she twisted her head over her shoulder to stick her tongue out at her boyfriend. Who, it had to be admitted, really did look genuinely pleased.

He was smart enough to stop clapping though, leaning forward and resting his chin on his forearms. “Not bad, Wise Girl. Turn the element off and put the lid on it, I’d say it’s just about done. How’re the noodles?”

Obediently, Annabeth forked out a pasta noodle from a happily bubbling pot. “Fine? I think. Should I throw it at the wall?”

“Yes.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, eating the rest of her noodle. There was a spark in those green eyes that she absolutely did not trust. She levelled the fork at him. “You just want to see me throw food around.”

“I mean, it would be hilarious.”

“You’re lucky you aren’t here. We could find out how hilarious it would be to throw pasta at you.”

“Pretty funny. I’m willing to bet.”

She laughed, taking the pot off the heat and turning it off. It was the work of a few minutes to put the meal together in a bowl, and she carefully grated some cheese over the top. Presenting it to the laptop, she couldn’t help the wide grin that broke across her face, pure pleasure at having achieved.

“Done!”

Her grin faded in increments. Not because of disappointment, or awkwardness, or anything even a little bit negative. No, it faded because Percy was looking at her like she’d hung the moon, and she wanted to reach through the laptop screen and lay one on him right then and there.

He cleared his throat, ducking his head again. “It looks great, Annabeth. You gonna taste it?”

“I don’t know.” She tried to lighten the mood. “I was thinking about just looking at it for a while.”

“It’ll get cold.”

“I didn’t say it was a good idea.”

“I miss you.”

Annabeth dropped her gaze to the bowl of spaghetti, nodding her head. It wasn’t just  _I miss you_  there in his words. It was something else. Something stronger.

And she felt it too. A part of her had always felt it.

“Yeah,” she said softly. “I miss you too, Percy.”

The silence between them hurt, but only because it existed alongside so much distance. Annabeth sighed, touching two fingers to her lips, and reaching out to press them to the camera. It was a silly gesture, maybe even a little juvenile, but it cracked a grin on Percy’s face, and that was all she cared about. 

“Stay?” she asked after a moment. “Until I have to go to bed?”

“And miss you getting spaghetti sauce all over your face? Are you kidding me?”

She laughed with him, carting the bowl and the laptop over to her small table. Maybe it wasn’t enough. Maybe she wanted him at her side with the same fervour that had driven her to become an architect, that had taken her away from him in the first place. But for right now, she’d take what she could get. 


End file.
